Of course, the science continues, and evidence continues to mount — that’s why the Continuous Update Project (CUP) is so important. Via the CUP, new evidence is systematically entered into the massive database we have created, and that evidence — old and new — is periodically reviewed. In 2009, the CUP report on breast cancer was released. Today, we publish the CUP Report on Colorectal Cancer.

The new judgments in this report confirm that red and processed meat increase risk for colorectal cancer. The CUP Expert Panel concluded that the evidence that foods containing fiber — like whole grains, beans, fruits and vegetables — offer protection against colorectal cancer has gotten so much stronger it has earned a grade of “convincing” — the most rigorous classification the CUP Expert Panel could assign. But the CUP also weighed the totality of evidence on a host of factors like alcohol, physical activity, body fat and much more.